Archive for September 14, 2016

In case anybody out there can relate, I’ve gained five pounds since we moved to Texas last year—two-and-a-half pounds in my right thigh and two-and-a-half pounds in my left thigh.

This does not thrill me. But I can guarantee you, if I lost every ounce of my newly acquired bulk over the next few months it would not noticeably reduce the size of the saddle bags I’ve taken on since we relocated to the southwest. I know this from long-term experience.

What is it with this exclusively female phenomenon? My husband—whose belly weight sloughs off like melting snow whenever he drops a few pounds—has a term for my predicament. He compares it to the FILO principle of first-in, last-out.

On-line definitions of FILO as a loan-funding arrangement are every bit as confusing as my adipose problem. But the acronym says it all without complicating matters further, so I won’t ramble off into complaints about how my body tends to compound the interest on these flab deposits.

Still, I have to ask, what biological logic am I missing here? For the past ten years, I’ve worked hard to build muscle and keep my metabolism firing. Yet some pig-headed, estrogen-driven internal mechanism pushes onward, thwarting any effort to direct stored calorie reserves to, say, a bony sternum or angular shoulder blades.

I guess it all boils down to that Mars/Venus thing, reduced to the cellular level. My husband also builds muscle mass more easily than I, and gets by with a lighter workout schedule. Because of the hormone differences and that lean tissue advantage, we women are genetically coded for FILO and the guys benefit from LIFO—last in, first out.

Modern medicine has come up with an equalizing remedy, however. They call it LIPO. But since the mere thought of being sliced into, selectively melted, and vacuumed out leaves me feeling all gooey inside, I’ll probably just make peace with toddling about on the lower limbs of a cartoon character. At least I haven’t turned yellow and sprouted feathers.

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